Timeline
A timeline of mancala history. Before 1000 *'4th century' - Oldest mancala board found in Abu Sha'ar, a late Roman legionary fortress (Red Sea coast, Egypt) *'6th - 8th century' - Fragment of a pottery board and several rock cuts found in Aksumite Ethiopia in Matara (now in Eritrea) and Yeha *'8th - 9th century' - The Arabic compiler Abu abd-Allah Muhammed el-Gahshigar (Persia) briefly mentions mancala in his work "Hezār wa-Yek Shab" *'c. 960' - Ali Abul al-Faraj al-Isfahani (Persia) gives a song in his book "Kitāb al-Aghani", which mentions mancala *'10th century' - Mancala board of Abd-al-Rahman's daughter, which is kept today in the Museo de Burgos (Spain) Before 1800 *'1086' - The Vietnamese mathematician Mạc Hiển Tích discovered số ẩn (negative numbers; literally: "hidden / secret number") by playing Ô Quan. *'1220s' - The founder of the Mali kingdom played Awalé when he was still a boy according to the famous Epic of Sundjiata *'14th century' - The Awalé board of the Musée National du Mali is made *'1620' - Richard Jobson, an English explorer, observes mancala as one of the first Europeans in West Africa (his account was published three years later in London) *'c. 1625' - King Shyaam aMbul aNgoong, the founder of the Bushoong ruling dynasty of the Kuba kingdom, introduces mancala to Central Africa *'1648' - The French traveller Étienne de Flacourt discovers Bao on Madagascar *'1699' - Job Ludolf mentions a mancala game in his "Lexicon Aethiopico-Latinum" for the first time in Germany *'1709' - The cabinetmakers Sommer in Künzelsau (Germany) make Baroque mancala game tables for the aristocratic family von Hohenlohe *'c. 1790' - Czarina Catherine the Great receives a mancala set from the Shah of Persia, which is today in the art collection of the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia 1800s *'early 1800s' - Olinda board of King Ehelapola (died 1815) *'1820s' - Muyaka bin Haji composes "Bao naligwa", a Bao poem, today in the Sri Lanka National Museum *'c. 1830' - E. W. Lane finds "Manqala" played in cafés in Cairo, Egypt; his travel account (published in 1843) introduces the word mancala in Europe *'1862' - Mukasa is the best Omweso master, when the British researcher John Hanning Speke reaches Uganda *'c. 1864' - Mancala is commercialized for the first time by Jaques in England as "Mangola" *'1894' - Mancala is used as a generic term by Stewart Culin, Director of the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Paleontology, in his highly influential paper "Mancala: The National Game of Africa" for the first time 1900s *'1940' - Kalah, the most successful modern mancala game, is invented by William Julius Champion Jr. *'1952' - Harold J. R. Murray describes almost 200 variants of mancala in his book "A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess" *'1960' - The first computer program plays a mancala game (Kalah) *'1966' - The Chama Cha Bao ("Bao Society") is formed in Tanzania to promote Bao la Kiswahili as one of the first mancala associations *'1984' - First edition of Larry Russ' best-selling book Games (book)|"Mancala Games", which boosts interest in these games in the west 2000s *'2002' - Awari, the first non-trivial mancala variant, was solved by the Dutch researchers John W. Romein and Henri E. Bal Category:Mancala Games in Culture